Roland Jupiter 4

editing is easy of course, and the presets, well they stink (except bass which is quite ok). only once you stored a sound, you can't modify it further. the more advanced stuff takes longer to figure out (as opposed to a juno or similar)

4 voice, keyboard action is pretty bad.
great chorus (stereo) - i personally don't mind the noise.
one of the best arpeggiators ever implemented. enables you to do weird fm shit. i played some to a friend and he thought it was amicrowave...

very human, warm, deep, organic, slightly out of tune - in short a beautiful oldschool sound totally unlike the metallic precision of jupiters 6/8.
sadly, no aftertouch.

i find mine quite sturdy.

never have

i'd absolutely get it again. it finds it's way on most of my recordings (abstract ambient electronic soundscapes).
i think i love everything about it, maybe wish it had aftertouch and a second oscillator. i actually think it sounds nicer than the 6 or 8.
totally inspiring instrument.

There's those great versatile analog poly-synths that not everybody can afford...and there is the Roland Jupiter4.
Polysixes are fine, Junos, too. But if you want a cheap polyphonic synth that is capable of more exciting sounds than yer average 1vco-vcf-vca high resonance sweep stuff then the J4 is what you get in the lower price range.

The VCO offers a sawtooth, a fixed square and PW/PWM. There's a sub- oscillator (fix at one oct below)and a noise source, however only switchable (instead of a vol pot).
There are controls for Range (16'8'4'), LFO mod amount, a four position selector that sets either the PW or PWM amount, a PW/PWM switch and of course the waveform selector with the additional position "off".
There's a non-VC HiPass and a VC-LoPass (24dB)with resonance that goes well into self-oscellation. The VCF can be modulated by Keytrack (position 4 of the selector means 100%), the LFO and/or the ENV1, the latter both in positive or negative direction.
Instead of those competitors mentioned above, the J4 offers two ENVs, the second to modulate the VCA (plus there's a VCA gain slider and an associated overdrive led...).

There is an "Ensemble" switch for the built in chorus. It sounds very good but sadly really adds a detectable lot of hiss.
The arpeggiator runs up, down, up&down or random. It can also be triggered from an external source (e.g. a Rim sample).
You can choose between two different modes of monophony and again two different modes of polyphony, and I must admit I don't know where the differences are. I think, however, that mono one retriggers the ENVs, whereas mono two doesn't. There also is a hold button and owners of the J4 may have noticed that the arpeggiator sounds different if you use that button instead of holding the chord with your hand.
You can save eight (!) patches and that's that. Indeed, it has preset sounds, but... just forget about that.
So far, so rather conventional.
Yet the Jupiter4 offers a second LFO that times the arpeggiator and/or the S/H that itself mod's the VCF.
It does feature a portamento -contrary to the Poly6. Next to that is a quite handy feature- a one oct. below switch.
And even though the J4 sports only one mod-lever this is one of the more interesting features of this synth. That's because it can work as a mod- and pitch-lever at the same time. There are three selectors, each one for VCO, VCF, VCA which are either off, in the LFO, or in the CV position. Since there also are two pots, one for LFO amount and one for CV amount, this is one very playable modulator. For instance, you could open the filter and add LFO to VCA modulation at the same time, and have both mod-amounts individually set. I should mention, that this lever is the only possible way on the J4 to let the LFO mod the VCA.

There is one thing I've not talked about, yet: the LFO.
Yeah, the Jupiter 4's LFO! Would you believe this is the very feature that makes all the difference? First off you can choose between four waveforms: sine, falling sawtooth, rising sawtooth and squarewave. Falling sawtooth- rising sawtooth? That means BOOM vs. WOOP in the field of VCF modulations. Confusing at first is the fact that there really are two sliders for the LFO speed. That has to do with that stored sounds not being re-editedable. That's why those Roland engineers thoughtfully added a second slider that allows you to change the LFO speed of the stored sounds. Next to this slider is an LFO-delay slider, and the good thing is, that it's not only a delayed LFO that jumps in, rather it's smoothly being faded in.
The real special with that LFO however is -it's speed.
I goes way up into the audio range (and way down to very, very low settings as well). So there you go: FM, AM and filtermodulation at audio frequencies.
In my Poly6 review in harmony-central I've mentioned the VCF sync trick. This works just a s fine with the Jupiter4, of course.
And that, as well as the audio range modulations is where good sounds can be found with this simple one oscillator synth.

One thing I haven't mentioned, yet is that its number of polyphony is a mere four. Believe me- that's enough for what the J4's good at. If you're into simple "synth" sounds like sweeped chords, LFO bubbles and stuff this one surely is great because of its sound. `Cause there's one other thing I should mention: this synthesizer is NOT built around SSM or Curtis chips. It's completely built of transistors, capacitors, resistors et al. on the sound generating part.
I also own a Korg Poly6 with it's SSM 2044 filters and that sounds really fine an' warm and all (least better than Junos IMHO), but when compared to the Jupiter4 it seems somehow lifeless and sterile.
But if you really wanna work that machine and get those less-conventional sounds, a polyphony of four does the job, believe me. And those sounds you get...
More than any other synth I have this one works well as a musical instrument.
And you know, there's a lot of music where most synth-patches would sound cheesy. Where only a modular could fit in. Or that good ol' Jupiter 4. (Yeah, well: or a Prophet5 or a Matrix12, of course)

One day I thought I should tune the VCOs of the J4. I removed those four round black plastic covers on the back, got a tuner ready and checked the frequencies of the four oscillators- they were absolutely in tune, all right. Hey! this synth is from `78 (or was it '77?) and I bet nobody's tuned it in more than ten years!
Talk about tuning stability.
On the other hand, this thing really is vintage, and that means: capacitors and potentiometers are gradually giving up. I've seen more than one that would start to do funky things. Be prepared to having to find somebody to fix it sooner or later.

Sure, a second VCO with all what then became possible would be great, but you know what? That'd mean that you'd have to pay at least three times the price you've actually paid. Because then the Jupiter4 would play in the same league as Prophet5s and the like.
Again and again I'm surprised that the Jupiter4 is being rated as "no real classic" and so forth. Sure, it is a rather simple little (HA! It should say "chunky" here) synthesizer, but soundwise it's worth every penny you've paid!

Some of the presets, such as the brass instruments are really cheesey and you couldn't get away with using them without covering them up with a lot filtering, delay, phasing etc... The manual? I've never seen one! But on the whole if your au fait with analogue synths you'll get a lot of joy out of this keyboard. A new comer, on the other hand may find it a little frustrating.

4 note polyphony is actually more than I'm used to, having used a monophonic synth for several years now. The LFO, VCO, VCF and VCA are all easy to use because its all hands on knob twiddling. The built in Chorus( called ensemble) is a bit naff! You can't expand this keyboard and neither does it have any midi or anything else like that since its from 1978, but for that period its absolutely smashing.

The presets, as I've said before are a little bad, but there are a few good ones, as for the ones you make yourself - well, there briliant of course! I would say this instrument would be most suitable for post rock/ Stereolab/ Lo-fi/ Kraftwerk style music although it would work easily as well in a dance environment.

I've only had this fellow a couple of weeks so its a little early to say. It didn't come with a case, which I'm a little worried about..

Haven't been there yet.

I would buy this synth again, because more than anything else its a period piece of the late 70's and looks amazing. Superb logo's and graphics! On the whole it's quite difficult to sync it with other drum machines, synths etc, because its analogue, but you can't get sounds like this from anything made after 1984!

Friendly, but unable to help due to product age.
I'm getting it repaired. I have located people who can supply a new "brain" and program it too!

I would buy it again.
I've been playing from age 6 to now (28)
I love its arpeggiator, analogue-ness, appearance (many knobs), sound, everything. I ten to consider it as a glorified mono/embryonic polysynth, which is exactly what it is!
I wish it had a brain (see below)
I am currently subjecting this synth to a brain transplant. Does your obslete Roland synth need one? I'm thinking of starting a web resource for those of us who still prefer real to virtual, but whose "real" keyboards have a problem. Is your synth brain-(or otherwise) dead?(mine is) Does your Hohner Clavinet need new strings or striker pads (mine does). Does your Fender Rhodes need new tines, new strikers or even a new stand or "Rhodes" badge (yep, mine does). Do you need user/service manuals for long-since discontinued gear (I do)? Is your reel-to-reel 8-track shafted (mine is)? Has your Vox Continental gone West (mine has, but I've found the guy who built it!)
How many of you think this would be a good idea? Let me know, and I'll think about it!

The instrument comes with a few rom presets and 8 ram sounds, which can be edited easyly through the controllers. Everybody who once used an analogue monophonic synth will find the Jupiter to be no struggle to programm.

The Jupiter-4 has ons VCO, a suboscillator, a high-pass-filter, a low-pass-vcf with resonance and a chorus. There are two envelopes, one for the vcf and the other for the vca. There is also one lfo which can be used to modulate the vco, vcf and vca.
Normally this synth doesn't offer a possibility to be integrated into a MIDI-setup. I bought mine from Touched By Sound, who fitted cv/gate, and it works fine. The outputs are stereo (chorus).
As its name says, the Jupiter-4 can be played polyphonically. It has four voices altogehter.

Well, the way i use the Jupiter-4 may differ from what other musicians do with it. I have it switshed to monophonic mode and play it through the cv/gate via a MIDI-keyboard, most often the Korg Prophecy.
I can only recomment the instrument for monophonic use. The sounds are absolutely bombastic. Vcf-modulations are the most outstanding thing about the synth!
When i had a first look at it i thought, this thing was going to be boaring. But use it as a monophonic instrument and turn the vcf-controller, and you will be blown away!

As far as i can tell - i have had mine for over two years now - there were no problems of any kind.

I've never needed to test it.

I NEED this instrument!!! The sound is warm and full, just the way you'd wish an analogue synthesizer to sound. The brasses are excellent for classical things, but my major style is electronics and dreamhouse. And in this respect the Jupiter-4 does a great job!

Old-style Roland preset/programmable synth-had about 10 preset sounds and I think it had 10 spots to store your own.Total knob and slider machine, real easy to program-even better if you don't have a clue about analog synths.

This is a 4 osc. with sub osc.,4 voice synth.Clunky action, and has built-in chorus (ensemble effect). no expansion,no MIDI, but has portemento and a very fast LFO,also has a cool arpegiator which can be triggered by a gate pulse from an 808/909/707/etc.

sounds are limited to synth stuff only, but it's been on most of the early 80's synth bands albums, such as Save a prayer by Duran Duran ( the weird sequence thing at the end ) Nova Heart by the Spoons (Canadian pop band I almost joined) Situation by Yaz , and numerous others (Tears for Fears/Heaven 17...) It has a VERY distinctive sound 'cause of the Ensemble effect

This thing weighs more than most cars!! Built out of wood and metal and solid as can be. Mine fell down the stairs at my old rehearsal hall in Kitchener and never complained.Very reliable indeed! Used it on the road and never had a problem .

I own a pile of Roland synths and only needed to get help when my U20 lost it's mind.It took then a week to get back to me, but they were pretty helpful when they called back.

I've actually been looking for one for quite a while-just to sample mostly - I sold mine some years ago. They really are a great synth, except they haven't really turned up in the Analog - revival group.Only buy it if you want some really unique character sounds.On a final note - It has no sonic similarity to the Jupiter 6 or 8 so don't think it's a basic version of those machines and pay too much!